


Idyll in Bluebells

by osprey_archer



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1963740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Renault breaks on the drive home from one of Gwen's interviews, Sybil, Gwen, and Branson have a picnic in a bluebell grove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idyll in Bluebells

The Renault bounced over the wagon ruts in the back lane, and Gwen, sitting on the car floor at Sybil’s feet, looked rather sickish and woeful in her maroon skirt suit. “Sit up on the seat with me,” Sybil urged. “It’s your afternoon off, after all, and it’s perfectly all right that you should catch a ride home with us from Ripon.”

Of course, it would be rather odd if anyone saw Gwen sitting in the back with Sybil rather than up by Branson, where a servant belonged. But no one was likely to see anything: Sybil had asked Branson to find them a little-traveled route home.

Gwen shook her head. Little wisps of red hair stuck to her forehead, and her suit looked wilted after hours waiting for an interview in a sweltering office. “Better not, milady,” she said, and she sounded so defeated that Sybil leaned forward to put a hand on her shoulder.

“It will come out all right,” Sybil insisted, although she was hardly sure anymore. One couldn’t just ring a bell and have a job brought up on a tray, after all. “We just haven’t found quite the right posting yet, that’s all.”

Gwen attempted a smile. “I wouldn’t want to work in that place anyway,” she said. “It’d be like typing in the kitchen, really, just about as hot, and the foreman shouting as loud as Mrs. Patmore and for less reason.”

The Renault bounced over a particularly deep rut. Sybil nearly fell out of her seat. “Branson!” she protested.

“Why do you think no one uses this road, milady?” Branson asked, cheerful as ever. 

Sybil sighed. But that made sense, of course. “It’s beautiful,” she said, to make up for complaining. “I do love the way the sunlight filters through the leaves so it seems almost like we’re underwater.” Sybil leaned forward. “ _Do_ sit up with me, Gwen, please. You can’t see the dog roses at all from the floor.”

But before Gwen could respond, the car gave another bounce, and the engine let forth a wretched grinding noise. “Is everything quite all right?” Sybil called, shouting to be heard above the metallic screech.

“Not quite, milady,” Branson said, and then the Renault halted so abruptly that it threw Sybil and Gwen against the partition - or rather, Gwen against the partition and Sybil against Gwen. Sybil’s wrist pressed awkwardly against Gwen’s bosom, and it might not have been so awkward, except that Gwen’s face turned scarlet and Sybil’s face close enough to feel the heat rising from Gwen’s cheeks. 

“Lady Sybil?” Branson called, and he sounded truly anxious. “Are you all right?”

“Unhurt but for my pride,” Sybil said, clambering ungracefully out of Gwen’s lap. Her skirt twisted around her legs, tangling her up so she nearly fell on top of Gwen again, and had to grab Gwen’s shoulder to steady herself. “I’m so sorry! You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“Not at all,” Gwen said, although now that the flush had begun to recede from her cheeks, she looked rather unwell. 

“I’ll just get out and have a look at the engine then,” Branson said. 

Sybil scrambled back up in her seat, where she sat very still and upright and with her hat dangled over her ear. She reached up and adjusted it quickly, and suddenly saw an image in her mind of herself haughtily grooming her ear like a cat (or like Edith, in a pet), and had to laugh. “If only I could wear my Turkish trousers and headband everywhere,” Sybil said. “No skirts to tangle me up, no hats to fall off. I daresay it might make your work easier for you, too.” 

“Any time it saved we’d lose again in hearing the vicar talk about our wicked ways,” Gwen said, her eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“Granny talked of nothing else for days when I first bought my trousers,” Sybil said, and smiled reminiscently. “She loved it.” 

Gwen’s lips twitched upward, although she didn’t allow a full smile. It was too bad. She really was quite lovely when she smiled - like an undiscovered pre-Raphaelite painting, all fair skin and red hair. 

Branson opened the side door of the car. “It’s going to take some time to sort out, milady,” he told Sybil.

“Oh, how horrid,” Sybil said, and bit her lip. If she wasn’t home in time for the dressing gong, Mama and Papa would worry, and they might very well send out a search party if she didn’t make it in time for dinner. It might get Branson in trouble if they found he had taken this odd route from Ripon.

But Branson didn’t look worried, and Sybil certainly wasn’t going to tell him his business if he thought it would come out all right. “We’ll wait on the verge, then,” Sybil said, clambering out of the car. 

“Do let’s go in the woods, Lady Sybil,” Gwen suggested. “In the shade, you know.” 

Sybil hesitated. She was not used to servants offering an opinion without being asked. 

“If you like,” Gwen added diffidently. 

“Yes, of course!” Sybil said hastily. Gwen probably did not get many chances for the pleasure of walking in the woods. “We’ll stay in shouting distance of the car, if that will be all right?” 

Branson already had his head beneath the bonnet of the car. “Yes, of course,” he said. 

On the road, it seemed like early summer: the sun hot, the lane dusty, the dog roses beginning to bloom. But the woods, where only occasional patches of sun leaked through the gold-green leaves of the birch trees to the lush green undergrowth, still felt like spring, and they made Sybil also feel very young. Soon she would wear her hair up all the time, like Edith and Mary, and be a young lady and not at all a child anymore; but not quite yet.

“Walk with me,” Sybil said impulsively, sliding her arm through Gwen’s so they could walk together like friends, rather than Gwen falling a few steps behind like a servant.

For a moment Gwen stood still, not pulling away but not welcoming, either. But then she smiled, and tucked her arm more securely under Sybil’s, and said, “Do you see the lady-slippers? Half-hiding under the bush, there.” 

At first Sybil did not see the lady-slippers, because they were small and beginning to wither. But Gwen pointed them out to her, and pointed out another, farther on; and they walked onward into the woods, and for all Sybil was paying attention they might have got quite lost if Gwen hadn’t stopped Sybil with a sharp tug on her arm. “Look,” Gwen whispered, and lifted her chin to indicate to birch trees bent together, forming almost a gateway; and on the other side of the gate, a shadowed copse deep blue with bluebells. 

“Oh, how lovely!” Sybil said. She ducked through the natural gateway and went to her knees among the flowers, gathering up a loose handful and scattering them on the lap of her light blue skirt. “I feel like a wood nymph,” she said, laughing and lifting her face to Gwen.

Gwen’s face bloomed into her pre-Raphaelite smile. “Here, take off your hat,” Gwen said, and she lifted Sybil’s felt hat off her head so lightly that Sybil barely felt it; and then Gwen ran a quick hand over Sybil’s hair, not smoothing it back in place but loosening it, so a few strands fell in Sybil’s face.

The liberty startled Sybil, and she felt almost angry in her startlement. Gwen drew away, looking at her half-raised hands as if they were not quite connected to her body. “I mean – begging your pardon, my lady – ”

“Well,” said Sybil. “I suppose Artemis didn’t spend much time arranging her hair when she ran wild through the woods.” She reached up to put her hair back in place, but stopped herself. “Do you know how to make a daisy chain?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to learn, but between them Edith and Mary drove away the governess who promised to teach us.” 

“They’re easy enough to make,” Gwen said, plucking up more bluebells as she spoke. “Slit the stem with your nail - like this - then thread the stem of the next flower through,” Gwen said. Sybil plucked a bluebell herself, then stripped off her gloves and carefully, lips pursed with concentration, worked a fingernail through the stem. “Yes! Just like that,” Gwen said, and Sybil felt so foolishly proud that she had to smile. “Now just string them together till you’ve enough to make a crown.”

Swift-fingered Gwen, intent on her work, finished her bluebell crown long before Sybil had strung together more than a few flowers. “Here,” Gwen said, and lifted the bluebell chain from her lap to lay it on Sybil’s hair.

“How do I look?” Sybil asked.

“Like a fairy queen,” Gwen said. 

Sybil touched the crown lightly, feeling the soft petals with her fingertips, then took up her bluebell chain with new urgency. “Let me finish mine, let me crown you,” she said. “Then I won’t be queen, we can just be – wood nymphs together, maybe. You’ll have to take down your hair...”

Gwen gently laid her hat aside, then pulled the pin out of her bun and shook her head so her long red plait uncoiled down her back.

“Will you be able to put it up again?” Sybil asked.

“Of course,” said Gwen, sounding surprised, and Sybil felt foolish. Of course Gwen knew how to do her own hair. Doubtless she did it every day.

Gwen untied the ribbon at the bottom of her plait and swiftly disentangled the strands. Her hair hung in loose red waves to her waist, so that she looked like Guenevere - or Lady Godiva perhaps, cloaked in her rich hair. “You look _beautiful_ ,” Sybil said,

Gwen laughed, her cheeks flushing so deeply that her nose turned red as well, and tightened her hands in the grass. “I’m not sure I want to be a wood nymph,” Gwen said. “They all seem to come to bad ends, if the paintings in the billiard room are any guide.”

“Well,” allowed Sybil, thinking over the nymphs she knew. “Sometimes they lead men to bad ends instead. But I don’t particularly want to drag Branson to his death in a pond.”

“No,” said Gwen. “He’s nice, Branson. Why can’t nymphs ever be happy?”

Sybil frowned, threading her bluebells together. “Perhaps it’s just that no one writes the stories of the happy nymphs?” she said.

“Very likely,” Gwen said. “I suppose the Greeks thought if they talked of nymphs frolicking their days away and never getting in any sorrow because of it, they’d be a bad example to the rest of us.”

“Very likely!” Sybil said. She lifted her lopsided crown to the sunlight and looked at it critically. “Oh, dear. I never have been a hand at fancy work. I expect Edith could have made something darling.”

“I’ll fix it for you,” Gwen said, reaching for the crown.

But Sybil drew the crown away from her. A bluebell petal fell into her lap. “I want it to be all my own work,” Sybil said. “I imagine the wood nymphs are rather careless about this sort of thing, anyway. Let me put it on you, do, Gwen.”

She lifted the bluebell crown, barely breathing because it seemed so fragile and she didn’t want it to fall to pieces in her hands. Gwen lowered her head so that her red hair blazed in one of the splotches of sunlight that made its way through the maze of rustling birch leaves bluebell glade, walled with rustling birches. Sybil’s fingers brushed Gwen’s warm hair as Sybil settled the crown, and as Gwen straightened up again the sunlight caught on her face so her pale skin seemed to glow.

But then Gwen lifted a hand to adjust the crown and knocked it crooked, and a cloud passed over the sun, and she was just Gwen with her face crinkled in a grin. “We should make one for Branson too,” Gwen said, eyes bright with mischief, and Sybil gave such an unladylike whoop of a laugh that she had to cover her mouth.

The crunch of twigs in the wood made them both jump. “Speak of the devil,” said Sybil, and Gwen giggled, and Branson appeared among the trees looking like a rather smartly got up sprite in his green uniform. He carried a handful of white dog roses in one hand and a basket in the other, and he lifted the basket toward them as if in explanation of his arrival. “I’ll have to let the engine cool off before I can fix it,” he called. “I thought we might as well eat my luncheon. No sense in letting it go to waste.”

He ducked under the archway to enter the copse, then stopped as if struck, his light eyes moving back and forth between the two of them. Sybil became aware, again, how like a painting they looked: a pair of Waterhouse nymphs, in crumpled clothing and flowers in their loosened hair. “Weren’t you hungry in Ripon?” Sybil asked.

Branson gave his head a little shake. He set down the basket and moved toward them, plucking a dog rose from his bouquet and holding it out to Sybil. For a moment she thought he would put it in her hair, brushing the locks aside to put it behind her ear, and the back of her neck prickled at that imagined touch.

But he only held the flower out to her. Sybil took it from his hand. She had taken off her gloves to make the bluebell crown, and her bare fingers brushed his skin.

Then he held out the other dog rose to Gwen, with a little bow. And he said, quite as if he gave flowers to girls every day and saw nothing odd in continuing the conversation where it left off, “I grabbed a bite at the pub. Nothing to drink when I’m on duty, of course, but it’s good to listen to what people are saying.”

Of course Branson, who so enjoyed talking to people, would prefer eating in a pub to sitting all alone in the car with a packet of sandwiches. Sybil must plan her trips to give him more opportunities for it. 

“Lucky for us, though,” Branson said, sitting heavily on the ground to unpack three sandwiches onto a clean white handkerchief that Gwen had shaken out. 

“Three!” said Sybil. “They do feed you well.” 

“Well enough, milady.”

She could not say what it was in his tone that made her suspicious. Perhaps it was that his voice was so meek. He was always polite, but meek - no. 

Ham and cheese seemed like a perfectly ordinary sandwich for a chauffeur, and chicken salad wouldn’t be too odd if the kitchen had it on hand. But Sybil could not imagine that Mrs. Patmore made it a habit to give Branson something as dainty as a watercress sandwich when he missed a meal.

“I filled up my vacuum flask with lemonade at the pub, too,” Branson said. “What luck.”

Sybil looked up swiftly. Branson had busied himself pouring lemonade into cups – and he just so happened to have three. Gwen had twisted away, so Sybil couldn’t see her face straight on, but from the sliver of Gwen’s cheek still in view Sybil could tell she had her mouth pressed together in the manner of someone trying not to laugh.

“You planned this!” Sybil cried. “There’s nothing wrong with the car at all, is there? You found the copse beforehand and put together a picnic lunch. Whatever for?”

Gwen and Branson looked at each other. Then they both began to laugh, and Gwen held out her hand to Branson. “Pay up,” she said, and he dug a shilling from his pocket and flipped it to her.

Sybil looked between them, confused. “What?”

Branson looked a little shamefaced. “I bet that you wouldn’t guess,” he said. “After all, how are you to know that sandwiches don’t appear from thin air?”

Sybil looked between them. “I know I’m terribly spoilt, but I’m not entirely stupid,” she said, half-laughing, but growing indignant and rather annoyed. 

“Never stupid,” Branson said. “But it isn’t only fools who can be terribly blind.”

Sybil looked down at the dog rose he had given her. “Did you put all this together for the bet, then?” she asked.

Gwen and Branson glanced at each other, and Sybil felt suddenly rather foolish and small, sitting there with her fingernails green from bluebell stems and a litter of petals in her lap. “I suppose it would have been terrifically funny if I didn’t notice,” she said, busying herself sweeping the broken bluebells from her skirt. 

“No, not at all,” Branson said. “I should have been very sorry to win the bet.” 

“It came up late in the planning,” Gwen said, and she sounded so distressed that Sybil looked up. “When I suggested about the copse, Branson thought we ought to have a picnic, and I thought that would give the game away… But the bet wasn’t important at all. I just wanted to do something nice for you - when you’ve done so much for me, and I haven’t done a thing to repay you.”

“Gwen! You’re always doing things for me.”

“But that’s my job,” Gwen said. “I wanted to do something for you, just as me.”

Sybil wanted to tell Gwen that it was nothing, that looking for jobs for Gwen gave Sybil pleasure, and that Sybil really had nothing better to do with her time anyway. All of that was true; but it seemed like a terribly ungrateful thing to say in the face of Gwen’s shy, shining smile, so Sybil only said, “Thank you.”

“I know it’s not much, compared to the picnics you have,” Gwen said.

“Oh no; those are hardly picnics at all, they’re so fussy,” Sybil said. She reached for a chicken salad sandwich triangle, then stopped at the sight of her dirty green-streaked fingertips; but then, with a rush of abandon, she took the sandwich anyway.

The lemonade was cool and lovely, just on the cusp of too sour, and the ham and cheese and chicken salad sandwiches seemed to Sybil perfection. The cress, however, had wilted during the long afternoon in the car; but Gwen and Branson seemed pleased with it, so Sybil didn’t say anything.

In the bustle of the picnic Sybil mislaid Branson’s dog rose; and when she found it again, it had lost a petal. 

Well, that wouldn’t do at all. Sybil took off her bluebell crown, carefully detaching a flower so that she could slide the dog rose into its place. She lifted it back on her head, settling it like a diadem with the dog rose as its chief jewel; and she grew so caught up her work that she only noticed afterward that Branson was watching her, half-smiling. He had taken off his chauffeur’s coat and waistcoat and draped them on the grass so they wouldn’t wrinkle, and lay in white shirtsleeves on the grass. 

“Do you want one?” she asked.

He gave a little jerk, as if waking up from a dream. “Want what, now?”

“A bluebell crown. Gwen showed me how to make them: she’s ever so good a teacher.”

Branson tilted his head back to look at Gwen, who sat leaning against a birch tree. “Are you now?” he asked, rolling over to look at her. His suspenders twisted behind his back, and Sybil wanted to straighten them. “It’s only I was wondering - ”

Gwen looked intrigued. “Well?” 

“If you could teach me how to type.” 

“To type!” Gwen sounded as surprised as Sybil felt. “Yes, probably. Not on the machine, though, I wouldn’t want to be hauling it up and down from my room and risk dropping it. But there are charts with the keyboard on them, so you could learn the fingering, at least…” She paused, eyeing Branson covertly, then asked the question Sybil had wondered about, too: “But why?” 

“It’d be a good skill to have. In case I become a journalist or a pamphleteer or something like that.” 

“A journalist?” said Sybil. “I thought you meant to be a politician?”

“I mean to be _something_ ,” Branson said, propping himself up on his elbows to look at her. “I’m not in a position to be too picky what.” 

“I suppose not,” Sybil said. 

“We all think he’s a bit mad,” Gwen said, grinning. Branson threw a dog rose at her. Gwen tossed a handful of bluebells back. 

“Is that quite fair?” Sybil asked. “You have ambitions too.” 

“Yes, but not to sit on the House of Commons.”

“Branson? Really?” Sybil cried, delighted. 

He dropped his face into the bluebells. “Likely I’ll just end up writing pamphlets,” he said, then turned his face to the side to look at them. “Yes, really. If I can.” 

Sybil clapped her hands together. She wanted to offer to help, as she tried to help Gwen; but he would never accept it, and in any case, the recommendation of Lord Grantham’s daughter probably would not go very far with socialists. “I think you’d be splendid,” she told him. “As an MP or a pamphlet writer. You probably have more experience with aristocrats than most of the people who write those ghastly pamphlets anyway.”

Branson winced. “I’m not going to write that sort of pamphlet,” he said. He rolled to lie on his back again, staring up at the sky. “I think that sort of thing just contributes to the mythologization of the aristocracy, when really what we need to create a classless society is to realize that aristocrats are only people and not demigods. Or demons.” He pulled a wry face. “Of course, that’s a bit harder to fit into a pamphlet.” 

“Ask yourself if it’s something Thomas would say,” Gwen suggested lightly, “and strike it out if it is.”

“He’s an ass, but that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong,” Branson replied, more sober. “Only I hope he never becomes a socialist; he’d use it to advance himself, without caring a moment for advancing the people.” 

“I don’t think he’d have any more luck at it than he has at Downton,” Gwen said. “He’s not very good at scheming, for all he does so much of it.” 

“Well - ” But Branson’s eyes suddenly shifted to Sybil, and he stopped himself from whatever he meant to say. Branson never talked about the other servants in front of her: class solidarity, perhaps. “I’m sorry, milady. This must be very boring for you.” 

It wasn’t, but Sybil could tell he wanted to change the subject. “I don’t think anything could be really boring here,” she said. “It’s such a lovely place. How did you find it?” 

“William told me of it,” Branson said. “He grew up not too far from here.” 

“No wonder he’s homesick,” Sybil said. She lay back on the grass, making herself comfortable among the bluebells. Branson glanced at her, but he looked away again before she could interpret his look. 

There was a little breeze: it stirred the branches and brushed the grass against Sybil’s cheeks, and it seemed very peaceful, the three of them lying in the clearing looking up at the snippets of sun that slipped through the screen of leaves. 

“It’s a pity things can’t be like this all the time,” Gwen said.

“Yes,” said Sybil. “That’s exactly it.” 

They fell silent. Sybil looked up through the birch branches, shading her eyes against the sun, and watched the thin long clouds move across the blue sky. The clouds drifted, dawdling as if they had nowhere better to be, and perhaps Sybil dozed a little. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but the sound of branches rustling together woke her. 

She half sat up. The rush of wind seemed to have woken Gwen and Branson as well, because they all blinked at each other like owls. The birch leaves shivered. They looked golden in the slanted sunlight. “Everything looks best at this time of day,” Sybil mused. “Magical, almost, in late afternoon – ”

She stopped. There was the briefest pause. “Late afternoon?” said Gwen; and then they all scrambled to their feet. 

“Will we have time to get back?” Sybil asked, trying to smooth her gown. “Oh, Papa can’t see me like this – ”

“Plenty of time,” said Branson, snatching up the basket and the vacuum flask. “I’ll drive as if the devil himself was after me.”

And he was right: Sybil dashed in the back entrance of the house just as the dressing gong rang, and escaped up the stairs before Papa or anyone else could see the bluebells tangled in her hair.

Short of time though she was, she stopped to look at herself in the mirror before she cleaned herself up. The bluebell circlet hung lopsided on her head, with the dog rose close to falling out, and her hair was an absolute bramble.

Sybil thought she looked rather fetching, but no one else would agree; or no one above stairs, at least. She lifted the circlet off her head, very carefully, and thought where she could hide it. 

There was nothing wrong in saying _The car broke down, and Gwen showed me how to make daisy chains to pass the time_. But Sybil did not want to tell her mother about it, and be scolded for being too familiar with the servants - or, worse perhaps, to be praised for being kind to them, when there was no noblesse oblige about the afternoon at all. 

Sybil put the circlet in a hatbox, and shoved the hatbox to the back of the wardrobe, and felt better about it.

After all, if one revealed a nymph’s sacred grove, the nymphs would never let one back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to asakiyume for betaing this fic!


End file.
